Forever & Almost Always
by kbolden
Summary: A modern version of Romeo and Juliet with a One Tree Hill twist. ONE-SHOT


Forever & Almost Always

By: Kristen Bolden

My eyes shot open at the loud thunder. The monstrous noise sent a frightening shrill down my spine. I looked over at the digital clock that was perched on the edge of the nightstand and it read 4:30 a.m. It was only half an hour before I had to get ready for work so I didn't bother trying to go back to sleep. Instead, I slowly made my way out of bed and pulled out a scrapbook that was wedged between my mattress titled, "Forever & Almost Always". I walked down the hall to my home office, which was just across from my bedroom.

After turning on the light, I curled up in my black leather office chair. I saw the tiny drops of rain quickly descending down the window. The rain had always brought out sacred memories of ten years beforehand, memories of Jake.

I put my shoulder length curly blond hair into a messy bun with a ponytail that was lying on my desk and opened up to the first page of my scrapbook. The scrapbook was basically a visual memoir of my senior year in high school, which was debatably the best year of my life. It was the year that I had grown up and gotten a taste of the real world for the very first time. I fell in love, but at the same time I lost all of my heart's desires.

My name is Peyton Sawyer I am twenty-eight years old. My story started ten years ago and, at that time, the only thing I cared about was making sure that Brooke Jagielski wasn't crowned prom queen. The war between the Sawyer's and the Jagielski's started in the 1950s when Paul Sawyer and Edward Jagielski went out after a football game. No one knows for sure what happened between the two. Everyone has their own version of the story, but the only thing that we know for sure was that they left the best of friends and came back worse enemies than fire and ice. The feud between the families had been going on for almost sixty years when I was in high school and still lives on to this day. I had made a promise that I would stay true to the Sawyer's and make the Jagielski's life as miserable as possible. Brooke, the eldest of the 2000 generation, was my main target. I knew that even if she wasn't a Jagielski I would've never been friends with her. Not because of what she did, I could handle a little competition when it came to popularity contest, but because of who she was. There's really no certain word to describe her character other than to say that she was a "bad egg" as Willy Wonka would say when he was making his special Chocolate Easter Eggs.

Flipping through the pages, I found my mind wandering and reliving that bittersweet day. It was at the annual Sawyer Halloween Ball, which in reality was just a fancy way of saying "If you join the Sawyers you can come to my fancy costume party and I'll pretend to be nice to you for one night". The party was never my idea. It had been going on since the entire fiasco started in 1953. The Jagielski's did the same thing. Everyone in our school was invited to both, but they could only attend one. Whichever party they attended determined which side they were on, Team Sawyer or Team Jagielski. You may be thinking that it's just another stupid high school fight, but it was much more than that. It was our chance to be the start of a new voice and a new legacy that would hopefully be passed down for years to come.

~ • ~ •~

_Don't stop, make it pop, DJ blow my speakers up, "_TiK ToK" by Ke$ha was booming through the speakers by the DJ booth. The music was being played so loud I could feel vibrations coming from the floor going all throughout my body. The party was at the Hard Rock Café in New York City and the place looked amazing. The windows were covered with black tarps to prevent the daylight from outside sneaking its way through. The lights were red and white giving the place a certain "emo" vibe to it. And to top it all off, my friend Haley Davis had her "nobody understands me drawings" all over the place. She was artistically angry, I guess you could say, and was never exactly Miss Sunshine. She did throw people off a lot though with her fiery red hair and peppy attire. Nobody would guess by her appearance that she was the type of person who liked to crawl inside a dark hole and listen to "Shattered" by Trading Yesterday all day long. She was even on the cheerleading squad but only as a favor to me in order to keep Brooke from becoming my co-captain.

I, on the other hand, was the complete opposite of her. I was one of the happiest people you could meet in a single lifetime. I always wore sparkles or headbands in my hair and was always wearing bright colors. Purple was my favorite color. My hobbies were being captain of the cheer squad, listening to Taylor Swift, and coming up with my next diabolical plot to annihilate Brooke off of her very own social status. Don't get me wrong, I am a nice person as long as you don't get in my way.

So far, the night was a success. Everyone was dressed up and having a great time. Everybody wore masks to hide their faces for the free auction. The way that worked was that anyone who came without a date could claim one at the auction. You could get the guy or girl you wanted as long as you were first to claim them. The only catch was that you couldn't know who the person was until midnight when everyone who was in the auction takes off their masks. I wasn't entering myself this year, but I was going to attempt to grab my own form of a date.

It was about nine when it was time to select our dates and Haley came up to me to inform me that she had heard rumors that the Jagielski's where planning to crash the party and have a little fun. I knew all to well that the Sawyer's and the Jagielski's never meet eye to eye when it came to the definition of fun. Nevertheless, I wasn't going to let Brooke and her minions ruin my night. This was my one shot to prove to my family that I had earned my last name.

I know what you're thinking. What kind of parents would make their child earn their last name? It wasn't like that at all. It was more of a personal accomplishment than an "I have to prove something to you" kind of situation. But if I do succeed then it wouldn't hurt to get at least some sense of approval from my family. My father, especially. I had to live up to him. He was a legacy to the Sawyer name and everyone who knew about the Sawyer-Jagielski rivalry, which in this city was pretty much everybody, knew how important he was. Even if you didn't know us personally, our families pretty much owned most of New York when you put us together. Our family either owned or invested in almost all of the major restaurants and hotels, while the Jagielski's worked on…well I'm not exactly sure what they owned or invested in, but I did know that they made a lot of money doing whatever it was they were doing.

"Where did you hear that?" I asked Haley referring to the rumors about Brooke.

"It's been going around the entire party that they're here."

I sighed, this was not what I needed at the moment. "Well, if you find them, be sure that they are escorted out by security in the most public and humiliating way possible."

She nodded and then went to go check out her options in the auction. I did the same. It was kind of hard to choose a guy when you couldn't see his entire face. One year my friend, Melissa, thought she picked her prince charming. In reality, she just chose a Trace Cyrus wannabe. If you had seen him then you would have been scared of the guy. If you asked me to classify him, I would have put him in a category titled "Freaks of Nature". Since we couldn't judge by looks, I usually just went by their personality. Before you placed your "bid" on the date that you wanted, there was a station area where you went from person to person and talked to them for three minutes and then moved on to the next guy. It was similar to speed dating except if you didn't like the person right off the bat then you could move him along without having to suffer through the three dreadful minutes of listening to him talk about how his cat died when he was twelve. I had to pass the first four guys, not because they were obnoxious, but because of the way they approached the whole situation. They all seem annoyed with the fact that they had to talk to me in order to find a date. Granted, they didn't know who I was because of my mask, otherwise I don't think that they would've been so rude to me.

When I came to the fifth guy, he was about six feet tall and most likely in my grade, but he could've been a junior. He had dark hair and green eyes. Other than that, I couldn't make out much of a physical description. We ended up making good conversation. Overall, I really liked the guy. He was nice and didn't act like it was some kind of chore to be talking to me so I decided to place my claim on him.

After I claimed him, we met up again and found ourselves sitting outside in the pergola trying to guess each other's identity before midnight by playing twenty questions. He was on his eighteenth question, "If you had to choose would you eat a rice cake or a Big Mac?"

"A Big Mac," I laughed at his question. "What does that have to do with anything?"

He shrugged his shoulders as he leaned them against the wall to support himself. "I like a girl with a hardy appetite and plus you just eliminated more than half of the girls in our grade."

"So you are a senior?" his smirk gave me my answer. "That counts as your nineteenth question." He said.

I rolled my eyes and sighed and thought to myself, I actually really like this guy. "You have two more questions left."

He thought for a moment and then looked at me, "Do you believe in love at first sight?"

I was silent for a moment. What kind of question was that? To be honest, I had never really thought about it. I always thought that high school love was just a storyline that movie producers and authors used to make money. "I'll let you know."

"That's all your going to give me? 'I'll let you know'?" I couldn't tell if he was kidding or being a jerk.

"Take it or leave it. Either way my answer's still the same." I assumed that he was kidding, considering he laughed at my response. "So what about you?"

He looked at me uncertain, "What about me?"

"Do you believe in love at first sight?"

"I do now."

I was shocked by what he said and I could tell by the look in his eyes that he meant every word. Before I could say anything in response, the bell rang which told us that it was midnight and time to show our dates who we really were. We both stood up from where we were sitting and then agreed to take off our masks at the count of three. Once I removed my mask, I was greeted with a familiar face. I knew my mystery guy all right, Jake Jagielski.

~ • ~ •~

As I quickly walked across the street trying to make it before the crosswalk sign was turned off, I wondered why I had been thinking of Jake. This morning wasn't the first time. I had thought of him at least twice a week now for almost three months. I began to feel like I was betraying Chase, my fiancée.

Chase Scott and I had been together since college and he had finally popped the question on Valentine's Day earlier that year. I accepted in a heartbeat. I love Chase. I really do, but there was still that part of me that would always love Jake. For some reason, now more than ever, I wondered where my heart really was. I was on my way to meet Chase for lunch and, as of now, I was already ten minutes late. My boss wanted to talk to me before I left. The talk was a complete waste of time. She spent twenty minutes talking to me about the importance of stapling my papers before I handed them into her. I was a songwriter for EMI Records and apparently when I enter more than one song I have to staple them together so they don't get lost. Where would they go? My boss had the cleanest desk in the world and had never misplaced anything as long as I had known her, which was ninety-eight percent of my working life.

When I finally reached the restaurant, Chase stood up when he saw me and pushed my chair back so I could sit down just like a real gentleman. I thanked him and then caught myself when I started to think about how Jake and I had our first date.

After we found out that we both had feelings for each other, we didn't overlook the fact that we were enemies from birth. We ignored one another for a few weeks and when Christmas came around he had finally had enough. He pulled me into a storage closet so that no one could see and told me how he felt about me. It was really sweet. It reminded me of something that you would see in any romantic drama movie today, but it was real. So he asked me out and I agreed to go see a movie with him, in Brooklyn, because there was no way that Peyton Sawyer and Jake Jagielski were just going to prance around Manhattan just waiting to get caught with each other.

I told my parents I was going to the library and we met up at the bus stop.

~ • ~ •~

"Hey," I said as I approached him.

He smiled and greeted me, "You look nice." I smiled and then we got onto the bus.

We went to see _A Walk to Remember_, which was one of my favorite books. It was a good movie. They changed it up a bit, but in the end they did a good job at pulling the story off with a modern twist.

"Did you like the movie?" he asked.

"I loved it. Nicholas Sparks is one of my favorite authors."

"You're unpredictable you know that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well I just don't picture you as the type of person who likes to sit around reading a book about love and tragedy instead of drinking at a party."

"Well I'm full of surprises."

"You're telling me! So you like to read, prefer books over the movie adaptation, you write poetry, and my parents would kill me if they found out I was dating you? Where have you been all my life?"

I laughed, "How can you be so different from your sister and still be twins?"

"Brooke and I are different in a lot of ways. She just wants to please our parents. Me, I just want to escape this whole mess and be with you."

He really was too good for me.

~ • ~ •~

"You look amazing!" Haley exclaimed when I stepped out in my wedding dress. I was at my final fitting.

I had always imagined myself getting married in a simple white dress and having a small ceremony. According to my mother, that wasn't the Sawyer way of doing things. She got the final say in most of the wedding details. She had picked out a Pnina Tornai original and then added some custom changes to it so that no one would ever be wearing the same dress as me. It was an ecru color dress with the strap that was made into a cluster of flowers falling dramatically on my right shoulder. The bodice of the gown had a sweetheart neck line with a vast amount of beads in the design of several swirls. The skirt of the dress was gathered into layers at the top and then there was an aggregation of material in the shape of flowers to match the shoulder strap descending down the Cinderella style dress.

I looked at myself in the mirror. It was a stunning dress. I just didn't feel like it was "_the" _dress. I tried expressing that to my mother, but as usual she gets her way. I had originally told my mom that I wanted a maximum of one hundred and fifty people invited to the wedding and she comes up with a guest list of almost six hundred people on it.

The dress and the guest list weren't the only things I'd imagined to be different at my wedding. I pictured a different groom.

~ • ~ •~

It was a warm March day in Brooklyn when Jake and I were taking a walk in the park. Our hands were intertwined as we walked the quiet sidewalk in silence.

"You know what?" Jake asked.

"What?" I said looking up and making eye contact with him but still continuing to walk forward.

"I'm going to marry you someday, Peyton Elizabeth Sawyer."

I smiled at the use of my full name. "Yeah, I'd like to see the look on my parents' face when I tell them that. They would disown me." I wasn't kidding or being overly dramatic. If they ever found out that I was dating a Jagielski they would disown me. If I wanted to marry a Jagielski they would probably hire a hit man for both Jake and I.

~ • ~ •~

"Hey big brother." I said as I walked up to my brother, Lucas' grave. _Lucas Sawyer, beloved son and brother, 1992-2010. _That was what was written on his tombstone. I visited Lucas everyday at five o' clock since the accident.

~ • ~ •~

My mind was in a haze, partly from the horrific images that I had just seen and partly from the massive amount of alcohol that I had consumed only a few hours ago.

Jake and I had gone to a party together. It was right before graduation and we both figured no one would notice if we came in together. We had a couple of drinks and then a couple more until there wasn't a sober bone in our bodies.

I had deceived my parents and told them I was going to a party with a friend. They were now standing in front of me looking at me as if I was nothing to them, almost like they didn't care anymore.

Jake and I had caught a ride with a group of people we didn't know that were more drunk than we were and we had hit some teenage boy crossing the street. At least I thought he was some teenage boy at the time. It was Lucas, my brother. He died instantly.

~ • ~ •~

I've regretted that night every single day for ten years. I knew that it did no good to live in the past, because I could not change anything. I still blamed myself for allowing my brother to die. Everyone says that it was just an accident and it wasn't my fault, but in a way it was. Lucas was into drugs and I knew it. He was buying drugs the night that he was killed and I didn't say anything to anyone about his problem. I often find myself thinking that if I had told someone that maybe he would still be alive.

After paying my respects, I left the graveyard and began my twenty minute walk home. As I was walking across the street, I saw a familiar face. It was Jake. He looked a lot different than what I had remembered him as he had worry lines across his forehead and dark circles around his eyes. We made eye contact and he smiled at me. I smiled back and began to feel those old feelings rise to the surface of my heart. We waved at each other as we walked past one another and I didn't look back once he had past me. I felt my heart die inside as I walked farther and farther away from him.

If there's one thing that I've learned over the past ten years, it's that deception gets you nowhere. Honesty is always the best policy even if it may not be the easiest route to take. I lost my true heart's desire because I was selfish, my brother died because I was careless, and I lost the respect of my family because I lied to them and deceived them so that I could fall in love with a boy.


End file.
